Equitable Growth Profile of the
Omaha-Council Bluffs Region
Summary
Foreword
Communities of color are driving the OmahaCouncil Bluffs region’s population growth,
and their ability to participate in the
economy and thrive is central to the region’s
success now and in the future. While the
region demonstrates overall economic
strength and resilience, wide racial gaps in
income, employment, and education – along
with a shrinking middle class and rising
inequality – place the region’s economic
future at risk.
Equitable growth is the path to sustained
economic prosperity. By connecting people
with good jobs, raising the floor for low-wage
workers, and building communities of
opportunity metro-wide, Omaha-Council
Bluffs can put all residents on the path
toward reaching their full potential, and
secure a bright economic future for the whole
region.
The Heartland region is vibrant and filled with opportunity for
many. Nationally we are rated as one of the best places to live
in America. We have high quality-of-life, a solid economy, low
cost of living, good schools, and strong neighborhoods. At the
same time, there are serious inequities. We simultaneously have
great affluence and one of the highest rates of black child
poverty and male homicide of any U.S. metro area. We also face
major demographic shifts, fueled by high growth of our Latino
population combined with low growth of our existing resident
population. These challenges will test our region’s resiliency,
openness, and economic competitiveness.
Over the past two years, we have worked to forge a long-term
vision of our region’s future. Our aim is to grow responsibly as a
place where people of all walks of life want to live, work, play,
and contribute. Including principles and policies to address
regional equity – the full inclusion of all the region’s residents in
the economic, social, and political life of our communities – is a
core value.
The Heartland 2050 Equity and Engagement Committee
partnered with PolicyLink and the USC Program for
Environmental and Regional Equity to produce this profile. We
believe these data provide an excellent starting point for
understanding the growth realities we face, and opportunities
for addressing our disparities as a strategy for our economic
growth and competitiveness. We welcome your feedback, and
commit to continuing our analysis of the data to provide public,
private, and community leaders with the information needed to
guide our path toward our “more perfect union.”
Greg Youell
David Harris
Executive Director
Metropolitan Area Planning
Agency (MAPA)
Chair, Heartland 2050 Equity
and Engagement Community
Metropolitan Area Planning
Agency (MAPA)
Equitable Growth Profile of the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region
Overview
Across the country, communities are striving to put plans,
policies, and programs in place that build healthier, more
prosperous regions that provide opportunities for all of their
residents to participate and thrive.
Equity – ensuring full inclusion of the entire region’s residents
in the economic, social, and political life of the region,
regardless of race, ethnicity, nativity, age, gender,
neighborhood of residence, or other characteristic – is essential
for regional prosperity. As the nation undergoes a profound
demographic transformation in which people of color are
quickly becoming the majority, ensuring that people of all races
and ethnicities can participate and reach their full potential is
more than just the right thing to do – it is an absolute economic
imperative.
Although in the past equity and growth have often been
pursued on separate paths, it is becoming increasingly clear that
they must be pursued together. The latest research on national
and regional economic growth, from economists working at
institutions including the International Monetary Fund and
Standard & Poor’s, finds that inequality hinders economic
growth and prosperity, while greater economic and racial
inclusion fosters greater economic mobility and more robust
and sustained growth.1
Embedding equity into local and regional development
strategies is particularly important given the history of
metropolitan development in the United States. America’s
regions are highly segregated by race and income, and these
patterns of exclusion were created and maintained by public
policies at the federal, state, regional, and local levels. In the
decades after World War II, housing and transportation policies
incentivized the growth of suburbs while redlining practices and
racially restrictive covenants systematically prevented African
Americans and other people of color from buying homes in new
developments while starving older urban neighborhoods of
needed reinvestment. Many other factors – continued racial
discrimination in housing and employment, exclusionary land
use practices that prevent construction of affordable
multifamily homes in more affluent neighborhoods, and political
fragmentation – have reinforced geographic, race, and class
inequities.
Today, America’s regions are patchworks of concentrated
advantage and disadvantage, with some neighborhoods home
to good schools, bustling commercial districts, services, parks,
PolicyLink and PERE
2
and other crucial ingredients for economic success, and other
neighborhoods providing none of those elements. The goal of
regional equity is to ensure that all neighborhoods throughout
the region are communities of opportunity that provide their
residents with the tools they need to thrive.
The Equitable Growth Profile of the Omaha-Council Bluffs
region examines demographic trends and indicators of
equitable growth, highlighting strengths and areas of
vulnerability in relation to the goal of building a strong, resilient
economy. It was developed by PolicyLink and the Program for
Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) to help Heartland
2050, advocacy groups, elected officials, planners, business
leaders, philanthropy, and others working to build a stronger
and more equitable region.
This summary document highlights key findings from the
analysis along with policy and planning implications. The full
profile (and profiles of other regions) can be found at
www.nationalequityatlas/reports/equity-profiles.
Equitable Growth Indicators
This profile draws from a unique Equitable Growth Indicators
Database developed by PolicyLink and PERE. This database
incorporates hundreds of data points from public and private
data sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, and Woods & Poole Economics, Inc.,
Washington, D.C. The database includes data for the 150
largest metropolitan regions and all 50 states, and includes
historical data going back to 1980 for many economic
indicators as well as demographic projections through 2040. It
enables comparative regional and state analyses as well as
tracking change over time. Note that while we are able to
disaggregate most indicators by major racial/ethnic group,
figures for the Asian/Pacific Islander population as a whole
often mask wide variation on educational and economic
indicators for subgroups such as Hmong, Vietnamese, and
others. Also, there is often too little data to break out indicators
for the Native American population.
Defining the Region
For the purposes of this profile and data analysis, we define the
Omaha-Council Bluffs region as the eight-county area included
in the Heartland 2050 regional vision developed by the
Metropolitan Area Planning Agency and partners. The region
comprises Cass, Douglas, Sarpy, Saunders, and Washington
counties in Nebraska and Harrison, Mills, and Pottawattamie
counties in Iowa. All data presented use this regional boundary.
Equitable Growth Profile of the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region
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Any exceptions due to lack of data availability are noted in the
“Data and methods” section of the complete profile.
This demographic shift is projected to continue, and, by 2040,
39 percent of the region’s residents will be people of color. One
in four of the region’s residents will be Latino, the black
population will remain at about 8 percent of the total, while the
Asian and mixed race populations will grow and the white
population share will decline.
Profile Highlights
The region is undergoing a major demographic
shift
While Omaha-Council Bluffs is less diverse than many other
metropolitan regions in the United States, its population is
quickly becoming more multiracial and multicultural. In 1980,
90 percent of its 650,000 residents were white, and the
remaining 10 percent were predominantly African American. By
2010, the share of the population that was people of color had
more than doubled, rising to 21 percent of the region’s 865,000
residents, and a more diverse mix.
Communities of color – particularly Latinos but also Asians,
African Americans, and Native Americans, and people of other
and mixed racial backgrounds – are driving population growth
and change. Communities of color contributed 61 percent of
net growth in the past decade and accounted for the majority of
new residents in half of the region’s counties. During this time,
the Latino share of the population increased from 5 percent to 9
percent.
3
Youth are at the forefront of the region’s rising diversity and the
youth population is much more diverse than the senior
population. Thirty-one percent of residents under age 18 are of
color, compared with 9 percent of those over age 64: a 22
percentage-point racial generation gap. This gap is an economic
risk because places that have larger racial gaps between their
young and old tend to make smaller investments in the
educational systems and community infrastructure that ensure
youth can contribute to the region’s economic growth and
vitality.
More inclusive growth is the key to the region’s
future prosperity
Omaha’s regional economy is relatively strong and resilient:
unemployment is low, job growth is steady (though slower than
it was before the recession), and the region is well on the road
to recovery. While it is experiencing rising inequality, a
The region is quickly becoming more diverse and by 2040 four in 10 residents will be people of color
Racial/ethnic composition,
1980-2040
U.S. % White
Other
Native American
Asian/Pacific Islander
Latino
Black
White
2%
7%
2%
7%
90%
1%
5%
8%
2%
2%
9%
8%
3%
3%
13%
8%
4%
3%
17%
8%
89%
84%
79%
1%
19%
26%
14%
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau; Woods &
Poole Economics, Inc.
66%
2%
2%
1%
16%
32%
1980
1990
1%
3%
2%
2%
44%
39%
2000
74%
2010
2020
17%
57%
20%
23%
8%
61%
0%
4%
52%
1%
3%
48%
2030
Projected
19%
47%
68%
5%
4%
20%
2040
Equitable Growth Profile of the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region
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shrinking middle class, and a growing number of low-paying
jobs, most of these issues are less severe in the region than they
are in other metros or for the nation as a whole.
counterparts. While unemployment in the region is low and
falling – 4.5 percent in March 2014 – African Americans
continue to face recession-level unemployment rates (12.2
percent), and unemployment remains very high for white
workers without high school diplomas (13 percent). The region’s
African Americans are more likely to be unemployed than their
white counterparts at every level of education.
But the region’s positive economic outlook masks growing
inequities for the region’s communities of color and lesseducated residents that put its economic future at risk. Key
challenges are described below.
A potential skills gap
A skilled workforce is central to economic competitiveness in
the 21st century’s global knowledge-driven economy, but
growing segments of Omaha-Council Bluffs’ workforce lack the
education needed for tomorrow’s jobs. According to the
Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce, an
estimated 44 percent of jobs in the area will require an
associate’s degree or higher in 2020. Today, only 26 percent of
the region’s African Americans and 30 percent of its U.S.-born
Latinos possess that level of education. This figure is even lower
for Latino immigrants, at 5 percent. The achievement gap has
deep roots in public education systems, and looking at the share
of youth without a high school diploma in the region, we see
that African American, Native American, and Latino youth,
particularly immigrants, are much less likely to have high school
degrees than their white counterparts.
Employment and wage gaps
Workers of color and less-educated workers fare worse in the
regional labor market than their white and more-educated
4
Wages decreased for all workers over the last decade, but there
are still notable differences by race. White workers saw small
wage decreases but workers of color saw more significant drops
in their wages during the same period. Similar to
unemployment, wages tend to increase with education, but
even more educated people of color are paid less than their
white counterparts in the Omaha-Council Bluffs region. People
of color with a bachelor’s degree (but no graduate degree) earn
$5 less per hour than their white counterparts, which adds up to
about $10,000 less per year. The fact that racial economic gaps
remain even after controlling for education reveals the
persistence of racial barriers to economic opportunity –
including overt discrimination as well as more subtle forms of
exclusion that are embedded into institutions and systems.
A shrinking middle class and growing numbers of working poor
An inclusive, growing middle class is the hallmark of a
prosperous region, but, following the national trends, fewer
households earn middle-class incomes in Omaha-Council Bluffs
now than in 1979. More fall into the lower-income bracket. One
reason for the decline of the region’s middle class is that many
There is a wide gap between the education levels of black and Latino workers and the educational requirements of future jobs
Share of Working-Age Population
with an Associate’s Degree or
Higher by
Race/Ethnicity/Nativity, 2012
and Projected Share of Jobs that
Require an Associate’s Degree or
Higher, 2020
56%
46%
26%
48%
44%
30%
5%
Latino,
Immigrant
Black
Latino, U.S.born
Other
White
API,
Immigrant
Source: Georgetown Center for Education and the Workforce; IPUMS. Universe for education levels of workers includes all persons ages 25 through 64.
Note: Data for 2012 by race/ethnicity/nativity represents a 2008 through 2012 average and is at the regional level; data on jobs in 2020 represents a regional job-weighted
average of state-level projections for Nebraska and Iowa.
Jobs in 2020
Equitable Growth Profile of the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region
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local jobs in the information and manufacturing industries,
which pay middle-class wages, have disappeared in the past 10
years. Job growth is significantly faster among low- and middlewage jobs, where wages are increasing at much slower rate than
for high-wage jobs.
Disconnected youth
Educational and job success among young people who’ve just
entered or are about to enter the labor force is critical to
building a strong and competitive workforce. On the positive
side, more youth of all races and ethnicities are graduating high
school now in the Omaha-Council Bluffs region than in the past,
and the number of “disconnected youth” age 16 to 24 has
declined. At the same time, youth of color are still less likely to
graduate high school and more likely to be disconnected than
their white counterparts.
The middle class has become more diverse, shifting from 8
percent people of color in 1979 to 15 percent people of color
today, yet its composition still does not fully reflect the region’s
racial and ethnic diversity. While Latinos and Asians have
gained shares, the share of African Americans in the middle
class has declined.
5
Racial and economic inclusion would strengthen
the economy
With a growing low-wage sector, the region’s ranks of the
“working poor” – defined as working full-time with an income
below 150 percent of the poverty level – is also swelling.
Communities of color are more likely than whites to be among
this group. More than one out of 10 blacks and Latinos in the
area are working poor, compared with one out of 40 whites. The
region has a particularly high share of African Americans who
are working poor: 12.2 percent compared with 7.1 percent
nationally.
The Omaha-Council Bluffs region’s rising inequality and its
racial gaps in income, wages, education, and poverty are not
only bad for communities of color but they also hinder the
whole region’s economic growth and prosperity. According to
our analysis, if there were no racial disparities in income, the
region’s GDP would have been $3.9 billion higher in 2012.
Unless racial gaps are closed, the costs of inequity will grow as
the Omaha region becomes more diverse.
Implications
The region’s growing, diverse population can be a major
Unemployment Rate by Educational Attainment and
Race/Ethnicity, 2012
14%
Median Hourly Wage by Educational Attainment and
Race/Ethnicity, 2012
White
White
Black
People of Color
Latino
13%
$27$27
11%
$22
12%
7%
4%
5%
5%
11%
5%
2%
8%
Less than a
HS Diploma
HS Diploma,
no College
6% HS
More than
Diploma but less
than BA Degree
$12 $11
5%
2%
$17
$17
$13
18%
6%
BA Degree
or higher
4%
3%
3%
Source: IPUMS. Universe includes the civilian non-institutional population ages 25 through
64. Unemployment for blacks with less than a HS diploma is excluded due to small sample
size. Data represents a 2008 through 2012 average.
Less than a HS HS Diploma, More than HS
Diploma
no College Diploma but
less than BA
Degree
$15
$12
BA Degree
Less than a HS Diploma, More than BA Degree
HS Diploma no College HS Diploma
but less than
BA Degree
12%
Masters
Degree or
higher
2%
Source: IPUMS.
1% Universe includes civilian noninstitutional full-time wage and salary
workers ages 25 through 64. Note: Data represents a 2008 through 2012 average. Dollar
values are in 2010 dollars.
Masters
Degree or
higher
6%
Equitable Growth Profile of the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region
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economic asset – if its leaders invest in ensuring that all of its
residents can access good jobs and contribute their talent and
creativity to building a strong economy. The Omaha region has
demonstrated economic resilience through the Great
Recession, but persistent inequities for its communities of color
and low-income residents are a threat to future prosperity. Our
data analysis suggests focusing on the following priority goals
to spur more equitable growth in the Omaha region. Below we
describe these goals and the strategies that regional leaders
might pursue to advance them, along with examples from other
regions.
in neighborhoods where unemployment and poverty are
high and by implementing local and targeted hiring and
training strategies.
• Remove barriers and implement strategies to help minorityowned businesses expand. This can create employment
pathways for people who are jobless because these firms
tend to hire more employees of color and people living in the
community.
• Leverage the economic power of large anchor institutions,
like hospitals and universities, for community economic
development. These anchors can develop intentional
strategies to hire jobseekers facing barriers to employment,
create on-the-job training opportunities, and purchase more
goods and services from local- and minority-owned
businesses who provide local jobs.
Create pathways to good jobs for workers facing barriers to
employment
The region’s high levels of unemployment for African Americans
and people of all races without postsecondary education,
particularly in the context of overall low unemployment, calls
for a strong focus on creating on-ramps to good, familysupporting careers for these populations. There are several
promising approaches to building these pathways:
• Implement sectoral workforce strategies that connect
workers with low education levels to high-quality training
programs that lead to gainful employment in growing
sectors of the economy. Such approaches are a win-win for
employers who need access to skilled workers as well as
workers seeking employment.
GDP in 2012 (billions)
• Ensure public investments in roads, transit, sewers, and
GDPare
if racial
gaps
income
other community infrastructure
made
in in
ways
that
were eliminated (billions)
create job access and opportunities for the underemployed
and unemployed. This can be done by targeting investments
6
Evergreen Cooperatives build wealth in Cleveland
neighborhoods. A group of foundations, hospitals, universities,
and the city are creating jobs and wealth-building opportunities
in some of the highest poverty neighborhoods in Cleveland by
leveraging a portion of their multi-billion dollar annual business
expenditures to start worker-owned cooperatives. The
Evergreen Cooperatives include an industrial laundry, a solar
installation firm, and an urban farm that have collectively
created over 100 well-paying jobs. The long-term goal is to
create a network of worker-owned firms with 5,000 employees.
Learn more at www.community-wealth.org/cleveland.
Raise the floor on low-wage jobs
Policies that promote strong and rising wages, especially for
The Omaha region’s GDP would have been $3.9 billion higher in 2012 if there were no racial disparities in income
Actual GDP and Estimated GDP
without Racial Gaps in Income,
2012
$60
$55.8
$51.9
$50
GDP in 2012 (billions)
$40
GDP if racial gaps in income
were eliminated (billions)
$30
Equity
Dividend:
$3.9 billion
$20
$10
$0
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis; IPUMS. Note: Data for 2012 represents a 2008 through 2012 average.
$60
$55.8
$51.9
Equity
Dividend
Equitable Growth Profile of the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region
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low-wage earners, are critical to reduce the region’s rising levels
of working poverty. Someone working full-time at federal
minimum wage makes $15,080 yearly – at least $2,000 less
than what they need to meet the basic costs of living in the
region. Minimum wage campaigns are underway in both states,
and in November 2014, Nebraska voters chose to raise the
statewide minimum to $9 per hour by 2016. After Nebraska's
minimum wage increase takes full effect, someone working full
time at minimum wage will make $18,720, an increase of nearly
25%. Local and state governments in the region should consider
these tools and strategies to raise the floor for its low-wage
workers and ensure employers it does business with are
providing good jobs.
Build communities of opportunity throughout the region
All neighborhoods located throughout the region should
provide their residents with the ingredients they need to thrive.
Rebuilding distressed neighborhoods and opening up highopportunity neighborhoods to lower-income people and people
of color who have been historically excluded are both important
strategies. Coordinating transportation, housing, and economic
development investments over the long term will foster more
equitable development patterns and healthier neighborhoods
across the region. Omaha’s current economic development
strategy describes the lack of affordable housing near job
centers, lack of public transit from east to west, inadequate
infrastructure, and high poverty rates in North Omaha as
challenges to regional economic prosperity. Making
transportation investments that increase mobility and access to
jobs for low-income, transit-dependent residents addresses a
critical barrier to employment for workers and expands
employers’ access to workers. Addressing lingering racially
discriminatory housing and lending practices, and enforcing fair
housing laws, is also critical to expand opportunity for all.
New York City raises wages for thousands of workers. In
2014, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio raised the wages of
thousands of New Yorkers through an executive order that both
expanded the number of workers covered by the city’s livingwage provisions and raised the actual wage.2 Starting
immediately, the living wage was raised from $11.90 to $13.13
and will likely reach $15.22 by 2019. The living-wage expansion
is estimated to cover 70 percent of all jobs at companies that do
business with city agencies and boost the annual gross income
for a minimum wage worker by over 60 percent. Roughly
18,000 workers should see their wages increase.
Integrate immigrants into the regional economy
Immigrants are contributing to growth in the region, and 15
percent of children have immigrant parents, yet they face
barriers to fully participating in economic and civic life. Many
regions are implementing successful strategies to ensure
immigrants have access to the services, education and training,
entrepreneurship, and job opportunities they need to thrive.
The high growth rate among immigrant populations reinforce
the necessity of strong local programs focused on integration
and training into the local and national economy.
Tennessee welcomes immigrants to build a stronger
economy. Responding to a rapidly growing immigrant
population (the third-fastest growing in the nation), the
Welcoming Tennessee Initiative was launched in 2005 to
counter anti-immigrant backlash and strengthen the local
economy. Using dinner conversations between long-time
residents and immigrants, billboards, and other community
strategies, the initiative successfully defeated English-only
referendums and legislation. Since then, the project has
inspired a national Welcoming America initiative, with affiliates
in 21 states. Learn more at www.welcomingamerica.org.
7
Twin Cities’ green line expands transit access. This fall, a new
light rail line started running the 11 miles between downtown
Saint Paul and downtown Minneapolis, connecting several of
the region’s most diverse and lowest-income communities to
jobs and economic opportunities spanning the corridor. The
light rail was originally going to bypass three of the
neighborhoods with the highest transit needs until the
grassroots “Stops for Us” campaign successfully convinced the
federal transit agency to change the metric it used to determine
cost effectiveness to consider economic development,
environmental sustainability, and social benefit in addition to
ridership. Learn more at http://dcc-stpaul-mpls.org/specialprojects/stops-us.
Ensure diverse civic participation and leadership
Given the region’s rapid demographic shifts, public sector
leaders should take steps to ensure active engagement by all
racial and ethnic communities in local and regional planning and
development processes. Leadership pipelines that expose and
connect underrepresented communities to public sector jobs
and leadership positions are also needed. Leadership
development and capacity-building efforts are also important to
grow a diverse cadre of neighborhood, organizational, and civic
leaders. Youth leadership development is particularly important.
Finally, building strong multicultural and multiracial regional
leadership is critical to the region’s future. One step to do this is
to create a durable regional equity network that can work
Equitable Growth Profile of the Omaha-Council Bluffs Region
together to advance a multi-issue agenda for equitable growth.
Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute trains next
generation of leaders. Since 2010, Urban Habitat’s Boards and
Commissions Leadership Institute has been training leaders
from underrepresented San Francisco Bay Area communities to
serve on decision-making bodies. The Institute empowers
residents to become leaders on the issues that have the most
direct impact on their neighborhoods: transportation, housing,
jobs, and more. Graduates have won 35 seats on priority boards
and commissions, including planning commissions, housing
authorities, and rent boards. The program is being replicated in
the Twin Cities, Sacramento, and elsewhere. Learn more at
urbanhabitat.org/leadership/bcli.
Build cradle-to-career pipelines for all youth
Ensuring that all youth in the Omaha region, including African
Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and immigrants, can
access a good education that leads to a career, is critical to
develop the human capital to power the region’s economy in
the future. Boosting the share of black and Latino youth who
obtain at least a two-year college degree is critical to ensuring
the region’s workforce is ready for the jobs of the future, and
tackling the higher education challenge requires strengthening
the whole pipeline of educational supports for vulnerable youth
– from birth through career. High-quality early childhood
education is essential, as is equitable funding of public schools
to ensure the schools attended by low-income students provide
them with an education that prepares them for college and
careers. Addressing the disproportionately high levels of high
school dropout and lack of high school degrees for black and
Latino youth, particularly Latino immigrants, as well as
disproportionate levels of disconnectedness from work or
school for 16-to-24-year-olds is also necessary. Replacing overly
harsh “zero tolerance” school discipline policies with strategies
focused on positive behavior support and restorative justice can
work to lower suspension and expulsion rates and reduce the
number of disconnected youth. Increasing the availability of
apprenticeships, career academies, and other education and
training supports that provide work experience and connections
can also keep more youth on the track to graduation, college,
and careers. Bilingual education and other language access
strategies can help youth who are English language learners
excel in school. And it is not enough to only address in-school
time; high-quality afterschool and youth development activities
that provide learning and positive social opportunities outside
of the school day are also critical ingredients for academic and
career success.
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8
Promise Neighborhoods help youth beat the odds. Promise
Neighborhoods is an interdisciplinary, place-based initiative
modeled after the Harlem Children’s Zone that works with
more than 50 communities to ensure that all children receive
the educational, health, and community supports needed to
successfully transition from cradle to college and career. Using
a disciplined approach, Promise Neighborhoods critically assess
how to use cross-sector partnerships to not only build
programs, but rebuild systems. The Chula Vista Promise
Neighborhood, for example, brings together 28 local agencies
to coordinate services and resources for more than 1,500
students and provide parents with health and literacy classes
through the Universidad de Padres (Parent’s University). Learn
more at promiseneighborhoodsinstitute.org.
Bridge the racial generation gap
Bridging the racial generation gap between youth of color and a
predominantly white senior population is critical to ensure a
strong workforce in the region. One arena where seniors and
young workers of color and their families have shared interests
is elder care. Ensuring living wages, benefits, and adequate
training and standards for care workers is a win-win path to
strengthen the quality of elder care. When care jobs are good
jobs that can support a family, turnover is lower and care is not
disrupted. Worker organizing, innovative business models, and
policy changes are all strategies to improve the quality of elder
care and care work. Another way to build bridges is to plan for
multigenerational communities, which allow the elderly to age
in place while providing safe and healthy environments for
families to raise children. Investments in multigenerational
community facilities and public spaces (for example, schools
that include facilities for seniors) can encourage social
interaction between residents of all ages.
Caring Across Generations Campaign. The Caring Across
Generations campaign is a national movement to bring
together families, workers, and others to transform the care
industry and ensure seniors and care workers can live with
dignity. In Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, and elsewhere, the campaign
builds broad coalitions to make care work visible, highlighting
its value to the overall economy and the support it provides
families. Caring Across Generations’ policy reforms include
increasing access to in-home care for Medicaid recipients and
ensuring care jobs pay a living wage and provide benefits,
training opportunities, and a pathway to citizenship. Learn
more at www.caringacross.org.
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Conclusion
Community leaders in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors
are already taking steps to connect its more vulnerable
communities to educational and economic opportunities, and
these efforts must continue. To secure a prosperous future,
Omaha needs to implement a growth model that is driven by
equity – just and fair inclusion into a society in which everyone
can participate and prosper. Concerted investments and policies
for, and developed from within, communities of color will also
be essential to ensure the region’s fastest-growing populations
are ready to lead it into the next economy. Existing local efforts,
such as Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce’s Prosper
Omaha plan and other ongoing education and workforce
initiatives should be continued and expanded to work toward
economic vitality for all people.
1 Andrew G.
Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry, Inequality and Unsustainable Growth:
Two Sides of the Same Coin?, Staff Discussion Note (Washington, DC:
International Monetary Fund, 2011)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2011/sdn1108.pdf; Jonathan D.
Ostry, Andrew Berg, and Charalambos G. Tsangarides, Redistribution, Inequality,
and Growth, Staff Discussion Note (Washington, DC: International Monetary
Fund, 2014) http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2014/sdn1402.pdf; Joe
Maguire, How Increasing Inequality is Dampening U.S. Economic Growth, and
Possible Ways to Change the Tide (New York, NY: Standard & Poor’s Financial
Services LLC, 2014)
https://www.globalcreditportal.com/ratingsdirect/renderArticle.do?articleId=13
51366&SctArtId=255732&from=CM&nsl_code=LIME&sourceObjectId=874103
3&sourceRevId=1&fee_ind=N&exp_date=20240804-19:41:13; Manuel Pastor,
Cohesion and Competitiveness: Business Leadership for Regional Growth and Social
Equity, OECD Territorial Reviews, Competitive Cities in the Global Economy,
Organisation For Economic Co-Operation And Development (OECD), 2006;
Manuel Pastor and Chris Benner, “Been Down So Long: Weak-Market Cities and
Regional Equity,” in Retooling for Growth: Building a 21st Century Economy in
America’s Older Industrial Areas (New York, NY: American Assembly and
Columbia University, 2008); Randall Eberts, George Erickcek, and Jack Kleinhenz,
Dashboard Indicators for the Northeast Ohio Economy, prepared for the Fund
for Our Economic Future (Cleveland, OH: Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland,
2006), http://www.clevelandfed.org/Research/workpaper/2006/wp06-05.pdf.
2 “Mayor de Blasio Signs Executive Order to Increase Living Wage and Expand it
to Thousands More Workers,” City of New York, accessed September 30, 2014,
http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/459-14/mayor-de-blasiosigns-executive-order-increase-living-wage-expand-it-thousands-more#/0.
Photo credits:
"Downtown Omaha" by Brian Wiese licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
monkeybusinessimages/iStock
Equitable Growth Profiles are products of a partnership
between PolicyLink and PERE, the Program for Environmental
and Regional Equity at the University of Southern California.
The views expressed in this document are those of PolicyLink
and PERE, and do not necessarily represent those of Heartland
2050.
Copyright ©2014 PolicyLink and PERE. All rights reserved.
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